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Archive for December 24th, 2013

“Icon” was a label imposed on me by others. I’m the leader of a political party. (Aung San Suu Kyi)

Readers, we have been writing about the situation in Burma (aka Myanmar) for over 5 years now and I believe we may have the most extensive archive (163 previous posts) on the conflict there between the Rohingya Muslims and the ruling Buddhists.

The mainstream media, shilling for the human rights industrial complex, has been building a massive PR campaign to get the West to believe that the Rohingya “victims” were just going about their business of living when they were put-upon by the Buddhists, but we have reported on many occasions where Rohingya agitators (and outside Muslim agitators) have been stirring the controversy as well. And, not just in Burma!

So here is the Washington Postdoing its ‘hit’ on Aung San Suu Kyi who ‘gets it’ about the growing Islamic influence around the world. Emphasis is mine.

RANGOON, Burma — When it comes to human rights, few names carry quite as much weight as Aung San Suu Kyi’s.

In more than two decades of facing down Burma’s former military junta, the opposition leader earned reverence at home and admiration across the globe — not to mention the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize. Her release from years of house arrest in 2010 and her election to Burma’s parliament last year helped persuade Western nations to relax sanctions on the current, civilian-led government.

So to some of Suu Kyi’s admirers in the West, and ethnic and religious minorities here in Burma, the past few months have been disconcerting.

That’s because “the lady,” as she is known, has been resisting calls to wield her moral authority on behalf of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority group that faces state-sponsored discrimination and has suffered attacks by extremist Buddhists in western Burma.

Suu Kyi, however, is making no apologies for sounding less like a human rights icon and more like a politician playing to the country’s Buddhist majority.

“Please don’t forget that I started out as the leader of a political party. I cannot think of anything more political than that,” Suu Kyi said at a Dec. 6 news conference in Rangoon. “Icon was a depiction that was imposed on me by other people.”

Suu Kyi: there is “a perception that global Muslim power is very great.”

Many Rohingya have lived in Burma — also known as Myanmar — for generations, but their national origins remain a subject of bitter contention. The government considers them illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh.Hundreds died last year in riots, which left tens of thousands of Rohingya in squalid camps. [Many Buddhists died in the rioting too, but that doesn’t fit the story line for the Washington Post—ed]

In an October interview with the BBC, Suu Kyi rejected charges that the Rohingya situation amounts to “ethnic cleansing.” She said that both Buddhists and Muslims have fears about each other, noting that there is “a perception that global Muslim power is very great.”

Photo is from this 2012 BBC storyabout how she chose house arrest instead of leaving the country with her British husband and children.